this expectancy, even as I was unsure of what it all meant. Everywhere I looked,
bodies were changing. Boys from school were suddenly man-sized and awkward,
their energy twitchy and their voices deep. Some of my girlfriends, meanwhile,
looked like they were eighteen, walking around in short-shorts and halter tops,
their expressions cool and confident as if they knew some secret, as if they now
existed on a different plane, while the rest of us remained uncertain and slightly
dumbfounded, waiting for our call-up to the adult world, foal-like on our
growing legs and young in a way that no amount of lip gloss could yet fix.
Like a lot of girls, I became aware of the liabilities of my body early, long
before I began to even look like a woman. I moved around the neighborhood
now with more independence, less tied to my parents. I’d catch a city bus to go
to late-afternoon dance classes at Mayfair Academy on Seventy-Ninth Street,
where I was taking jazz and acrobatics. I ran errands for my mom sometimes.
With the new freedoms came new vulnerabilities. I learned to keep my gaze fixed
firmly ahead anytime I passed a group of men clustered on a street corner, careful
not to register their eyes roving over my chest and legs. I knew to ignore the
catcalls when they came. I learned which blocks in our neighborhood were
thought to be more dangerous than others. I knew never to walk alone at night.
At home, my parents made one major concession to the fact they were
housing two growing teenagers, renovating the back porch off our kitchen and
converting it into a bedroom for Craig, who was now a sophomore in high
school. The flimsy partition that Southside had built for us years earlier came
down. I moved into what had been my parents’ room, they rotated into what had
been the kids’ room, and for the first time my brother and I had actual space for
ourselves. My new bedroom was dreamy, complete with a blue-and-white floral
bed skirt and pillow shams, a crisp navy-blue rug, and a white princess-style bed
with a matching dresser and lamp—a near-exact replica of a full-page bedroom
layout I’d liked in the Sears catalog and been allowed to get. Each of us was given
our own phone extension, too—my phone was a light blue to match my new
decor, while Craig’s was a manly black—which meant we could conduct our
personal business semi-privately.
I arranged my first real kiss, in fact, over the phone. It was with a boy named
Ronnell. Ronnell didn’t go to my school or live in my immediate neighborhood,
but he sang in the Chicago Children’s Choir with my classmate Chiaka, and with
Chiaka acting as intermediary, we somehow had decided we liked each other.
Our phone calls were a little awkward, but I didn’t care. I liked the feeling of
being liked. I felt a zing of anticipation every time the phone rang. Could it be